First-Class Matches Trinidad and Guyana 1958/59 to 1989/90

159 Other matches in Guyana The following pages present the full scorecards of the only two first-class matches played in the 20th century, other than Jones Cup matches (or equivalent), by a team representing only a single county of Guyana: the matches played by Berbice against the MCC touring team of 1959/60, and against a strong international XI put together by EW Swanton in the following season. Quite how these matches came to be accepted as first-class is unclear. The Jones Cup final had not yet been granted first-class status, and so Berbice were not yet an established first-class side. No record has been traced ahead of the 1959/60 tour that confirms that the game against MCC would be regarded as a first-class game; but all other matches of three days or more on that tour have been so regarded (including the match against the Windward Islands that is accepted as that side’s first first-class match), and so it may be that the three-day game against Berbice came to be accepted as first-class almost by default. Certainly it has always been included in the first-class averages for the tour, for example in The Cricketer in April 1960, and later in Wisden 1961. Having accepted the 1959/60 match as first-class, a decision to do the same for the Swanton match in 1960/61 was presumably inevitable. Berbice have played no other three-day games against senior touring sides since 1960/61. Also included here, as a historical curiosity, is the scorecard of the one Jones Cup semi-final match from which Essequibo emerged victorious: their (non-first-class) game against Demerara in 1980/81, which they won on first innings, thereby earning their only appearance in a first-class match in that season’s Jones Cup final.